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joy in her heart than she’d held in many years. More joy than she thought it was able to hold at all.
    In Apartment 1B, Fee fell asleep in her worn-out easy chair eating Christmas cookies and watching a rerun of Bob Hope’s Christmas special on the Family Channel, her snoring as loud as her voice. But as she fell to sleep her thoughts were of her grandniece, and the children she’d never had. How different would it all have been? She wondered. And in her dreams she was thin and quiet and was running down the beaches with her sisters.
    Itsy sat up straight in her bed leaning her head against the hard headboard and rubbing her eyes with her hands. I need a plan, she thought. If the girl is to stay, then I need a plan.
    Anthony, in Apartment 2A, slept on the floor to be closer to his one true love. And directly downstairs, Eleanor drifted into sleep trying to grasp all of her lost memories while the soft snow created a cocoon all around them.
    And in apartment 2B, Georgie’s old apartment, piled high with all his things packed up in boxes and bags, a child was crying.

 
    3
    Itsy
     
    After the day that took half our family, the building went to Mimi. She was the oldest functioning child. It was a wonderful gift. And to be honest, it belonged more to her than me or Fee. Mimi loved every brick of the place, still does. It’s harder for me and Fee to forget the ghosts. I don’t know if Mimi forgets them, or just blinds herself, but I don’t ask and she doesn’t tell.
    Eight siblings and two parents in a two-bedroom apartment was close comfort. Mama and Papa slept in the front bedroom, the four sisters (myself included) slept in the back bedroom, and the boys slept in the attic. They had a fireplace up there for the cold winter nights, but those boys were a strong lot. They liked it up there. They planned their lives up there. My twin, George, was always supposed to be up there with them, but he usually crept into bed with me or Mama. He said he couldn’t sleep with the older boys because they scared him. Said they talked about how they were going to die.
    And George was right, our older brothers all knew they would die when they enlisted. They had some kind of courage those boys.
    I thought of the girl, her back pressed against the door in the hallway. That face. Light, like Mama. Soft features, not hard like Carmen. A softer version of her mother in all the good ways. The last time she was back she was about thirteen or so. She wasn’t at all the little spitfire she’d been when we’d first had her. I remember I was so worried that night. Worried she’d remember—just like I am now. But her preteen instantaneous (and mutual) crush on our Anthony trumped all, and even though I kept checking to see if my throat would loosen, Carmen yanked her out of our lives just as fast as she’d walked back in. Our girl was gone. Again. She was lost. And it was my fault.
    Babygirl. Well, that’s what we nicknamed her when she stayed with us that summer she was ten. Her real name is Eleanor.
    “That’s a fat girl’s name,” said Fee, once we’d gotten the scared little duck to bed that first night.
    “You should know a fat girl’s name when you hear one,” said Mimi.
    Fee couldn’t hear her. But she wouldn’t have been hurt even if she had. Fee lost her hearing the day we lost our family, the day I lost my voice. Anyway, it was an honest observation. Mimi’s honest to a fault. Fee is fat. I keep wondering if she’ll get so fat she won’t be able to leave the apartment.
    In the end, we decided on Babygirl. And Babygirl she stayed, even though she’s all grown up now. I wasn’t sure she’d stay. I should have been. When we see something, the three of us, it happens.
    Sometimes I wish we didn’t know things, especially now that we’re getting on in age. It’d make life simpler, not knowing. And The Sight is fickle. It shows us just so much—and then? Then the rest is up for interpretation. Mama always said that